


The Taste of Scotch

by AuleValar



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Captain Canary, F/M, Leonard Snart Lives, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25662433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuleValar/pseuds/AuleValar
Summary: When the Oculus exploded, Leonard Snart expected to die, not to wake up here, in a Nazi prison camp, being waylaid by a man named Ray Terrill.He has to get out of here, to get back to Sara and Mick and the team. But first, he has to convince Ray to stop calling him Leo... and that he's not his boyfriend...
Relationships: Earth-X Leonard "Leo" Snart/Ray Terrill, Sara Lance/Leonard Snart
Comments: 53
Kudos: 91





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Me: I'm going to write Leonard into the Invasion! crossover  
> Also me: Writes Leonard into the Earth-X crossover
> 
> Whoops, lol. Well, I started this fic where the team finds Leonard alive on Earth-X during the Crisis on Earth-X crossover. This should be a fairly short one. Probably about 3 chapters. 
> 
> Enjoy.

Leonard has been in a lot of prisons during his tenure as a career criminal. None of them, not even that Russian Gulag he broke Mick and Raymond out of, were ever quite as bad as this.

"This stop is for you," the guard says.

He gives Leonard a hard kick in the back that sends him sprawling face-first into a muddy courtyard. None of the other inmates stop to help him. Hell, most of them hardly see him at all. That is until a completely unfamiliar voice rips through the yard.

"Leo? Leo, _no_. Is that you?"

His head jerks up, and Leonard makes an effort to push his aching body out of the mud. There's a man with a pink triangle on his prison dregs rushing towards him, and his face is contorted with a look so filled with horror that it makes Leonard's heart stop beating for a moment.

There isn't a person in the world that cares about him enough to look at him like that.

Or rather - his mind flies back to those gut-wrenching last few moments at the Oculus - the few people that do are too war-hardened to show as much on their faces.

Leonard is so stunned by it, that he doesn't truly react to the man's calls until he's crouched next to him, reaching out to lay his hand on Leonard's shoulder.

Suddenly, it doesn't matter who he is or how much he cares. Strange men are not allowed to put their hands on him. Especially not after the wretched _cleansing_ ordeal they'd put him through while screening him into the camp.

"Who the hell are you?" Leonard snarls, jerking away from the touch. The movement makes him loose balance, and he finds himself tumbling into the mud again, hip first this time.

The man freezes, hand hovering in the spot where Leonard's shoulder had been.

"You... you don't remember me?" he asks, voice very small.

"Did you hear me stutter?"

The man's jaw drops open and hangs there. Leonard might as well have slapped him.

"I... my name is Ray. I'm... we're... Leo I'm your boyfriend. I love you. _You_ love me."

Leonard feels himself scoff involuntarily. He's acutely aware that he's hurting this Ray character with his attitude, but he can't help himself. The man's clearly off his rocker.

 _I don't love anyone,_ he almost replies. Except, well... maybe he can't keep telling people that lie. Whose going to believe him after the madness of the Oculus? He doesn't want to deal with the looks and the questions anyway.

"Think I'd remember that, don't you?" Leonard drawls instead.

"Yeah, I would," Ray agrees, face twisting. "Leo-"

Leonard doesn't let him get going. There's quite a few things that need to be nipped in the bud here.

"Stop that. Nobody is allowed to call me Leo, you understand?"

Ray hesitates. "But... that's what your mother called you," he protests softly.

Leonard feels himself physically recoil at the mention of that woman.

"Sure," he agrees, tone dangerous. "Right up until the day she left."

"Left? She raised you," Ray frowns.

"I raised myself," Leonard growls. Then he shakes his head. "This conversation is a waste of my time. I told you, you don't know me." A pause. "You go by anything else, _Ray?_ I can't call you that without also treating you like an idiot."

"My last name is Terrill..." Ray offers.

The devastation he was wearing earlier is slowly giving way to utter confusion.

"Peachy. Now, Terrill why don't you be useful and tell me what year is it?"

"Year? Ah, 2017."

Leonard's eyes narrow. That can't be right. If this is 2017, then something has gone horribly wrong. Could blowing up the Oculus have screwed the timeline up so badly? Or has something happened to the team? If they were alive, then he's sure they would've stopped this...

God, they better not be dead. He feels sick to his stomach just thinking about it.

"Country?" he chokes out, going for another angle. Maybe he's landed in North Korea or something. He needs all the information before he gives himself a panic attack.

"Country? There's only one country here," Terrill responds, but there's something in his eye. Something hopeful. "What country are you from?"

"...The U.S."

"City? Favorite movie?"

"Central City, and _The Italian Job_. What's your angle here?" Leonard asks.

Terrill's face splits open with some interesting combination of relief and awe. It's the kind of open expression Leonard would expect to see on someone like Barry Allen.

"You're not Leo," Terrill says, more to himself than to Leonard. Then he draws himself up, becoming more serious. "Sorry for the confusion. You're from another Earth."

Leonard blinks.

"Another Earth? You're fucking kidding me."

"Nope. I'm from another Earth too. Who knows, maybe we're even from the same one," Terrill says. His brows pull together with honest sympathy. "You must really be tough on your luck," he adds. "To have landed yourself here."

Leonard almost laughs, or cries.

Ray Terrill has no idea.

"Guy like you's got to have some sort of family right? People who give a damn back on your Earth? What do you do to talk to them?" Leonard demands.

Terrill only shakes his head. "I'm sorry," he says. "I... My whole life is here now. Even if we were out of the work camp, I don't have a way to talk to the people back at my home."

That answer is completely unacceptable, and Leonard basically growls at him in response.

"They're not going to come looking for me on another god damn Earth," he snarls. Then runs a hand over his scalp.

They think he's dead. They're not going to come looking for him at all. But if he was at least on the right planet, then there would be ways he could signal them.

Now, it seems like even that much might not be manageable.

Pushing himself to his feet, he looks around his cage with new eyes, and his heart actively plummets into his stomach.

Three layers of fences. Machine guns in every direction. Spot lights on the perimeter. Cuffs on select prisoners, collars on others.

This must be some sort of cruel cosmic joke. Things had finally - _finally_ \- been looking up for him. Mick was back. The team was on the verge of taking down Savage. And Sara...

Jesus Sara.

She'd kissed him. That means she feels the same about him, right? If he'd just had a little more time, to steal that kiss the right way instead of getting himself killed like some sort of moron...

He'd almost told Terrill that he doesn't love anyone, but fuck, he thinks he loves her.

"Whose not going to be able to find you?" Terrill asks tentatively.

Leonard isn't in the mood for 20 questions anymore. Sara might not really be his, but the memories are. He wants to clutch them close to his chest, where nobody will ever taint them, and no number of knock-off Barry Allens could possibly change his mind about that.

He is about to tell the nosy bastard to shove it when Terrill's voice drops to a whisper. "Hey, listen," he says. "I'm part of the resistance. My Leo, he's coming to get me. Maybe we can help."

Leonard pauses.

"You can get me out of here?" he asks dubiously.

Terrill's face softens. "You've got to tell me your story, or at least the relevant parts," he repeats. "I can't promise you anything, but... you're his doppelgänger, and I've never been able to say no to that face. We'll do what we can."

Leonard considers him for a moment before nodding. 

"Alright, I'll bite," he agrees. "You get me out of here," _back to her, "_ and I'll tell you all the stories you'd like."

* * *

Sara clanks her empty beer bottle down on the high-top table with a loud thunk, much to Mick's amusement.

"Damn Blondie," he hoots at her. "Who you racing?"

Sara turns to give him the stink eye. Mick, who showed up to Barry's rehearsal dinner in a t-shirt, leather jacket, and his biker gloves, has no room to judge her.

"Don't act like you didn't kill a six pack before we got here," she tells him pointedly. 

Mick grins and tilts his bottle towards her, an unabashed admission of guilt.

"Too many idiots in one room not to show up drunk."

"You could've stayed on the ship."

"And pass up free food? Bullshit," Mick snorts. "The Flash paid for all this crap. It's almost like we're robbing him again."

He drains the rest of his beer and shoots her a chaotic wink, then makes off again for the buffet.

Sara can't help but sigh as she watches him go. Mick is one of her best friends, but he's not making for much of a wedding buddy. Despite all his grumbling, he actually does want to be here. 

Unlike Sara.

She'd very much prefer to be almost anywhere else. That's the problem with being Captain though. If she didn't show face, Barry, Iris, and Felicity would've wanted to know why. And then what was she going to do? Explain it to them?

Every version of that scenario ends with them phoning the team and sicking Ray Palmer, uncertified therapist on her. Her life is stressful enough without that nonsense.

She scans the room, trying to decide whose company will be the least painful tonight. Eventually, her eyes hone in on a pretty Brunette that's taking shots at the bar alone.

Well, she thinks. Misery loves company. 

"Somebody who drinks like that is looking to make something go away," Sara says knowingly, as she approaches the Jitter's countertop.

"Yeah, well..." the woman starts. Her lips purse, either from the alcohol or her baggage, who knows. She's distracted however, when Sara takes the bottle from her and bangs back a shot herself. "And what are _you_ looking to make go away?"

Sara hits her with a soft smile.

This woman doesn't realize what a loaded question that is. It might be quicker, in fact, to tell her what Sara _isn't_ trying to forget.

Or maybe not.

Her ghosts have always haunted her in phases. Maybe she knows exactly whose been on her mind tonight here in Central City, at Barry Allen's rehearsal dinner. Maybe she's been imagining him leaning against the walls in all the little hidden corners, smirking at her and making caustic comments about heroes and happy couples.

But maybe it's also a little heavy to unload on this stranger about a lost-almost whose been gone for so long, half the people in the room don't even know his name.

"Nothing," she tells the woman instead. "I just like the taste of scotch."

And Sara wonders how many drinks it will take to make herself believe it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy update. I know it's been a while, but this is turning out longer than expected. I ended up cutting the chapter early b/c it was getting too long. This may end up a five chapter endeavor now I think. But hope you like it!

So, there is a slight possibility that sleeping with Alex may have been a questionable decision.

It's not that Sara had a bad time or anything. Quite the opposite. Alex had been everything she could've asked for last night - beautiful, fun, and clearly hung up on another person.

The problem comes the next morning, when Sara runs into Alex on her way into the ceremony and things promptly get weird.

Like, really, horribly, 'how's-your-butt', 'lovely-weather-we're-having' weird.

Alex mentioned last night that she doesn't usually do one night stands (while she was giggling drunkenly between kisses), but at the time, Sara thought it was kind of cute. Now she has to wonder if that was wise.

Sara's not usually around the morning after to witness any existential crises that she's caused. Plus, Alex is kind of like a co-worker, isn't she?

It's going to be a problem if things get weird.

Sara stares up at the church with a deep sigh. All this drama, and that irritating ache is still throbbing gently in her chest. Only now it's accompanied by a hangover too. The relief she'd felt from her tryst with Alex had only lasted as long as the alcohol. Like always.

But she supposes there is some good news to be found in this otherwise shitty morning - Sara doesn't immediately burst into flames when she steps through the front doors of the church.

Sometimes, she thinks, it's these small victories that count.

* * *

Sara may hate weddings, but she wouldn't wish this on her worst enemy.

(Well, that's probably a lie. The amount of horrible things she's wished on Damien Darhk is borderline disturbing. She probably wouldn't wish this on Malcolm though, so that's something.)

The Nazi's turn Barry's wedding into a slugfest.

There is no cake. There is no dancing. Barry and Iris don't even get to finish exchanging their vows before the chaos descends.

Sara shoves her ghosts viciously back into the feelings box where they belong. There will be time to wallow later. Right now, there are skulls to crack.

* * *

The enemy wears their faces.

It's Oliver and Kara, but worst of all, it's Tommy. Sweet, dead Tommy, who loved her sister.

Sara never got to see him again after she stepped foot on the Gambit.

It hurts to see him like this, but Sara knows from experience that it's worse for Oliver.

When Tommy pulls out a tooth filled with cyanide, Sara can't help but draw the mental comparison. Can't help but ask the morbid, what if?

_"And what are your plans for the two of us? We're dead in 2017 remember," he had asked her, like she ever could have forgotten. Thank god the answer had been easy._

Sara shakes that thought away. She's being ridiculous. Surely, even with her track record, the universe couldn't be _that_ cruel.

Right?

* * *

"Hey," Oliver says evenly. "I'm going to kill you."

Dark-Oliver has the gall to look amused.

"Nah, you won't," he replies with absolute certainty. "You're weak, and all of you choose the high road. You're heroes."

It's kind of ironic how super villains always assume the best of them.

Sara is with Oliver.

These people are going to learn what monsters look like on Earth-1, and Sara will sleep all the better for it.

* * *

They wake up on the ground of a prison camp on Earth-X.

It's cold and wet and dark and the air reeks of hopeless rot. It reminds her vividly of the A.M.A.Z.O.

Barry, Stein, Jax and Alex don't have the same intimate relationship with hell as Sara, but even they seem to sense death hanging on the other inmate's shoulders. Oliver most certainly can.

They have to get out of here. Not just for Kara, but for their sanity. This place will feed on it like a parasite until there's nothing left, if it doesn't kill them first.

The problem is, Sara doesn't know where to start. There are too many fences and too many guns and the team doesn't have access to their superpowers. The situation is worse than she wants to admit.

Plus to top it all off, one of the other prisoners is staring at them.

Sara knows they stick out in their combat garb - especially Oliver, since he is apparently the spitting image of the Reich's fearless leader - but she doesn't like the interest in the man's eyes.

If Sara didn't know better, she'd almost think that he recognized them. But that can't be right. They're on a whole different Earth, for Pete's sake. The only people who should know them are the enemies that put them here.

Sara catches Oliver's eye and flashes four fingers by her waist. _Suspicious, four o'clock_. He gives her a nod, and subtly shifts closer to Alex so that he can track the stranger. Unfortunately, the rest of the group isn't being nearly as cautious. They're in the middle of discussing their game plan when Jax and his damn bleeding heart of gold turns around and directly engages the stranger.

If they get out of here, Sara's going to start giving team lessons on situational awareness.

"What's the pink triangle for?"

The man, apparently surprised that he's been addressed, looks down at the badge on his chest, then back up to them. "I loved the wrong person," he supplies, watching their reactions a little too closely.

(Sara shares an uneasy look with Alex. Cheers to reason one million and one to get the hell out of dodge.)

The way he looks at Jax while they're speaking solidifies it for Sara. Something is off about this stranger.

She's less than thrilled when he takes Jax's question as an invitation and steps closer to him. "I'm sorry, but can I ask your name?" the stranger asks.

"Of course man, the name's Jax."

He straightens and surveys the rest of them with urgency. "That makes you Martin Stein then." It's not a question, more like a realization.

"Why, yes. Have you heard of us?" Stein asks curiously.

The man doesn't answer, and instead spins towards the rest of the group.

"You!" He singles her out. Is he... _excited_? "You're her! You're Sara Lance the White Canary."

Sara's hands twist in the cuffs. She wonders dubiously what the guards will do if a fight breaks out in the yard. "That's me," she agrees, eyes narrowing.

The stranger's face splits open into a smile that's distinctly out of place in the gloomy yard. In fact, the expression is light enough to steady Sara's itching need for a knife. You don't grin at your enemies like that unless you're really bat-shit crazy, and she's not getting that vibe off him.

"Who are you?" she asks.

"Oh, I'm Ray Terrill," he replies. He says his own name quickly, like it doesn't matter. "Would you follow me please? I think I know somebody you'll want to see."

Sara glances towards Oliver, but her boys are already nodding along.

"After you, sir," Stein says, apparently trusting Ray whole-heartedly.

Oliver shrugs one shoulder. "He's an inmate too," he mutters quietly enough that only Sara can hear.

She nods. For now, that's going to have to be good enough. Still, the two of them lag behind the others as they follow. Sara's not quite ready to allow any of them out of her sight, even for just a minute.

Ray leads them to the far end of the yard, stopping just short of the chain link fence.

"He's right over here," he says, gesturing to his right.

Stein suddenly stops walking, and Jax nearly punches the Professor in some sort of aborted motion of surprised.

"No way," Jax breathes and drops quickly onto one knee.

Sara frowns, stepping away from Oliver to get a better look and...

Her breath hitches in her throat.

The universe must fucking _hate_ her.

There's a man lying up against the chain-link fence, sound asleep. His prison uniform is stained a bloody crimson, and his face is a grotesque collage of black and blue bruises. But even underneath all the carnage, Sara knows that face.

She would know it anywhere.

"Sara, who is that?" Oliver growls low in her ear.

She doesn't answer him.

Sara could've lived her whole damn life without the image of Leonard beaten half to death in a Nazi prison camp seared into her mind. She's going to have nightmares about this. Horrible, awful, dreadful nightmares about faceless men torturing him in this courtyard while she watches on helpless.

And it's all going to be for nothing, because this can't be Leonard. Not her Leonard, at least. This man can only be some cheap knock-off. Another double to haunt them today, just like Tommy.

(Maybe later, the cosmic irony of a Good Leonard on this backwards Earth will be funny.)

But the worst part? It doesn't even fucking matter.

Sara knows that can't be him and somehow she can't breathe anyway.

Thank god for Barry Allen.

Oliver is not the kind of person who handles suspense well. His hackles raise higher every second the silence stretches, and at some point, Sara knows the Arrow is going to loose his patience. Luckily, Barry knows how to read a room. He glances at Oliver, then Sara, then Oliver again, and decides the situation requires some interference.

"I think that's Leonard Snart," he supplies hesitantly.

Oliver's jaw jumps. "Leonard Snart, the career criminal who tried to kill you five times?" he demands.

Barry flushes a faint red. "Three times," he says defensively. "Maybe four if you squint."

Alex is appalled. "Does it even matter at that point?" she asks.

"It does," Barry nods. "He helped me save Iris's life once. There wouldn't have been a wedding at all without Snart. Anyways, where do you think the Legends found Heatwave?"

A thick silence follows the question. Sara feels their eyes boring into her, waiting for her to supply something, anything to the conversation.

"He's dead," she manages, voice tight and bitter and angry. "That's not him."

Oliver's hand lightly grazes her elbow. "Who told Ray Terrill your name if that's not him?" he asks.

Sara wishes she had something sharp to throw at him. Oliver doesn't even know why she's so bothered. She never told him (never told anyone) about Leonard. Sara _hates_ how soft his voice is, hates how he's offering up this very logical question like it's some sort of comfort.

It's most certainly not.

"Oliver. Don't," she warns.

Don't dare plant that seed of hope. Sara knows all too well how hard it will be to cope when they're wrong. The Legion of Doom taught her that lesson, and she will never, ever forget it.

Oliver's eyebrows furrow. He hears the edge in her voice loud and clear.

Against the fence, Jax and Stein don't seem to have the same reservations. They flock around not-Leonard like its his second coming.

Jax kneels down beside him and places a hand on his shoulder to shake him awake while the Professor watches from behind. Not-Leonard startles badly at the disruption. He snarls something low and nasty that Sara can't quite hear, then seizes Jax bodily by his shirt collar.

Sara's muscles unglue all at once.

Leonard look-a-like or not, if he's a threat to her team, she will put him in the ground. (And deal with the emotional fallout later).

She only makes it two steps towards the fence before she freezes again.

Not-Leonard turns away from Jax and Stein to survey the rest of them. His eyes graze over Alex and Barry and Oliver before suddenly hooking onto her with a frightening intensity. Like she's the only one on this planet that matters.

Sara's heart leaps into her throat so fast, she chokes on it.

In that moment, she knows. _That_ is Leonard.

* * *

"Snart? Snart, is that you?"

Leonard stirs, feeling a foreign hand prodding his shoulder.

"I thought I told you not to fucking bother me Terrill," he grumbles, swatting at the hand.

Everything aches, except for Leonard's face which throbs.

You'd think a good old fashioned beat down would have earned him a few moments of peace - courtesy among thieves or something like that - but apparently not. This is what happens when you start throwing good samaritans into prisons. They don't know any of the fucking rules.

"Snart, it's us!"

The hand is back on his shoulder, shaking him impatiently, and through the haze of sleep, it occurs to Leonard that something is off here. Sure the voice is familiar, but there's something almost juvenile about its excitement. The repulsive soppy-tone that Terrill accidentally uses every so often is overtly missing.

If Leonard didn't know better, he'd think that voice belonged to...

His eyes whip open like somebody just doused him in cold water.

"Jax?" he hisses, suddenly sitting bolt-upright.

Lo and behold, the kid is squatting beside him, wearing one of the goofiest grins that Leonard has ever seen.

Um, no. Leonard feels like he's having a fucking coronary, because absolutely not. Jefferson Jackson cannot be here.

His hand darts out to bunch around the kid's sweatshirt collar. It's solid and real and very much attached to a living breathing body. Shit.

"What are you doing here?" he demands.

"Dude, what am I doing here? What are _you_ doing here?" Jax fires back.

"I'm not joking, Jackson," Leonard snarls. "Unless you're about to say the words 'prison break', you shouldn't be here."

His mangled features must be a vision. It barely takes a Planck second of frigid glaring to wipe the grin right off Jax's face.

"Unfortunately a prison break may not be on our itinerary today," a new grim voice joins the fray.

Leonard's eyes snap to the intruder. It's the Professor.

Holy shit, this can't happening.

Leonard doesn't release his stranglehold on Jax's shirt as he turns towards the rest of the courtyard. He has to know how bad this is. Who else... Who...

His mind barely registers that Barry and Oliver Queen are both there. All he sees is Sara. Frozen. Not ten feet away from him.

Leonard watches stupidly as twenty different emotions blink across her face, not one of which seems to be positive. By the time she settles, Sara is staring at him like she thinks the devil himself rose up from hell to personally torture her today.

Right. Cool. That's fine.

Leonard takes a shaky breath, focusing on the fiendish burn the movement provokes in his ribs. He needs to calm down. To separate himself from the panic that's roiling in his gut and that awful look on Sara's face.

"Is that really you Mr. Snart?" Stein asks, absolutely oblivious to the tension in the air.

"The one and only," he drawls, holding tight to his cold mask.

"Astonishing."

Leonard shrugs, still transfixed on Sara as he feels Stein's mood shift.

"But, how is that possible? The Oculus explosion should have been unsurvivable -"

"I'm sure you'll let me know when you figure it out," Leonard cuts him off. He doesn't give a rat's ass at this point, how he got here. Only that he's no longer here alone. "Where's Mick?" he asks. First things first. He needs to get that out of the way. 

Stein stops his raving short and shares a glance with Jax. "Well, I believe he was still at STAR labs when we were captured," the Professor conjectures. 

Leonard nods. Good. That means that the bastard survived the Oculus. They can deal with the rest later. "Jax didn't answer me," he rolls forward. "What are you all doing here? Must've come from some party if you're towing the Flash and Robin Hood with you."

"My wedding," Barry answers grimly.

That's startling enough that Leonard actually spares his old nemesis a glance. Barry looks like a burning man.

"That's some bad luck," Leonard says, genuinely sorry for the kid. Barry nods to him, and Leonard's eyes track unwillingly back to Sara, who still hasn't moved an inch.

He can't pretend like this isn't killing him.

"Jax, help me up," Leonard demands curtly.

"Um. Sure, but Snart, you gotta let go of my shirt."

Oh. Leonard had forgotten he still has Jax held in place by the collar.

He releases his grip, and Jax bounces easily up to his feet, holding out his hand to pull Leonard up after him. Usually, Leonard would sneer at this kind of help, but right now, there's hardly a choice. He braces himself between the fence and Jax's shoulder, lets his muscles adjust to the feeling of his own weight again.

Ever so carefully, Leonard takes one swaying step forward, only for Sara to take a step back.

"Sara," Leonard mutters, but he finds that he doesn't know what to say after that.

This is excruciating torture.

He's dreamed about seeing her again every day since he was first thrown into this hell hole, but he's never considered what he'd do if maybe she hadn't really meant that kiss at the Oculus. If she doesn't want him anymore. If she never wanted him at all...

A resentful frown twists across Sara's face. "Mick's usually the one who hallucinates," she breaks her silence.

Leonard blinks. 

Well... That's concerning.

He yanks his thoughts forcibly out of their downward spiral and reconsiders her completely.

Is... could that be _grief_? For him?

His mind flies back to his first day in the labor camp, when Ray Terrrill had come running towards him like a madman. He'd thought there wasn't a person in the world who would look at him like that.

Maybe he was wrong.

"Really, hallucinating?" he asks her. His throat feels dry. "Figured you of all people would know death's really a more temporary thing around here, Lance."

She winces, her lips parting slightly. He thinks, incredulously, that Sara Lance, the _assassin,_ looks like she might pass out.

Suddenly, Leonard can't stand the distance any longer. Let her stab him if she wants to.

He takes two long strides towards her, stopping hesitantly when he's looming in her personal bubble. She looks even paler up close, her blue eyes too wide, her breathes coming too short. Leonard lifts his hands with a practiced slowness (best not to startle the assassin) and gently picks a stray piece of her hair out of her face. His hand brushes against her cheek when he tucks it behind her ear.

"Sara, it's me," he whispers quietly.

It's like a dam breaking.

"Fuck Leonard," Sara breathes. Then throws herself at him.

The handcuffs on her wrists make things a little awkward, but they manage. Sara knots her hands tightly in the front of his prison dregs and smothers her face in his chest. Leonard snakes his arms around her shoulders and presses his nose into her hair.

Everything suddenly feels right again.

Really, he wants to be closer, wants to kiss her so badly it hurts.

But he doesn't dare. Not even Sara can completely distract him from the situation at hand. The guards allow a little bit of physical affection, but there's a line. If they cross it, the warning will come in the form of bullets.

He won't loose her before he's even gotten her back. This has to be enough for now.

"Sorry to worry you birdie," he mutters in her ear.

Sara makes a noise that is dangerously close to a sob.

"You have no idea, you asshole," she chokes out.

Leonard closes his eyes and holds her a little tighter.

He's going to give himself this moment. Two months in a prison camp wear you down, and now that she's here, he is going to let himself forget the guards and the fences and the machine guns.

But only for a few seconds.

He counts it down for himself in her breathes. Allows himself to bask in the absurd sense of safety that Sara brings him, even in this place where safety doesn't exist. It might not be the reunion he imagined, but it's everything.

Jesus, he missed her.

Times up.

"Sara," he murmurs quietly. "Sara, sweetheart. We can't forget the mission. Okay? We're not safe here. Those guards are trigger happy, the team is all cuffed and collared, and they didn't give you sleepover pajamas. You hear me Canary?"

The Canary. That's who they need now.

Sara, of course, is a better warrior than all of them. He's barely finished saying the word 'mission' before her grip on his shirt is loosening, and her shuddered breathing starts to even. It's a bit like a fist to the gut to see her swallow herself so completely on command.

But he knows, god help him, this is one of the reasons why she matters.

* * *

Remember the mission.

This is crazy. Sara feels crazy.

She has never, _never,_ needed a reminder to stay focused before. Definitely not while imprisoned in enemy territory, surrounded by dangerous men holding machine guns.

One look at Leonard though and she feels like she's loosing it again. She needs to compartmentalize, to focus on something, anything other than the year and a half that she's spent missing him.

Leonard takes a mechanical step back, withdrawing his arms from her back. It's cold without his body heat surrounding her, but he doesn't go too far. His hands only make it to her shoulders before stopping to rest there.

That's for the best. Sara needs to contact while she finishes collecting herself. It'll be too easy otherwise to convince herself that he's not real.

Taking a deep breath, Sara aims for some levity.

"I'm your sweetheart now, huh?" she says with a haunted smirk.

Leonard's lips twitch. She doesn't need to explain what she needs from him now. He just knows.

"Well now, I've been in prison for two months," he drawls, rather dramatically. "Can't blame a guy for getting a little fanciful." He quirks his eyebrows at her and his eyes travel somewhere that's probably inappropriate. "Love the new outfit by the way. Really shows off your figure."

He's talking about the new neckline of her Canary leathers. Sara would probably curb stomp anybody else for even thinking those words, but not him. She's never been so glad to hear Leonard being an ass before.

"Wish I could say the same about your face Leonard," she says, and this time, speaking is a little easier. "But you look like shit... Two months?"

She brings her hands up to his chin and gently pushes his face to the side to examine the bruising. He lets her, giving her time to catalogue every injury. His attacker hit him enough times that it's difficult to pick out the impact points, but Sara's a professional. She can still tell.

She is going to _hurt_ whoever did this to him.

"Two months," he confirms. One of his hands leaves her shoulder to pick her fingers off his face. "And before you finish plotting murder for me. The guards made it worth my while."

He glances over his shoulder quickly before making a complicated gesture with his hands. A thin coiled piece of metal materializes from seemingly nowhere between his fingers. 

Sara blinks at it. It's a spring from the inside the trigger mechanism of an AR-15. 

"Is that..."

"A lock pick," he supplies, smug.

How the hell did he sneak that off the guards while they were assaulting him? He would've had to disassemble a gun to get to it. 

His eyes sweep over her one last time, searching. "You okay?" he murmurs, serious again. 

Sara is suddenly floored by a wave of overwhelming fondness. "Get us out of here Snart," she nods and can't resist reaching forward one last time to smooth out his shirt. 

Leonard smirks, steel glinting fiercely in his eyes.

"My pleasure." 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm taking two classes for grad this Fall, so life's been pretty hectic. Luckily this was half done when I posted the last chapter. 
> 
> I'm still working on my other Captain Canary story too, but updates to both of these will be slow while life happens here. Hope you all like this chapter!

Leonard's reluctance feels corporal as he steps away from Sara.

Part of it, of course, is that he could hold her for years and it wouldn't be enough, but it's also their audience. As a rule, Leonard can't stand most people, and the particular Breakfast Club behind them is no exception. He has zero desire to deal with their nonsense right now. Especially since they all just watched him rip his heart out of his chest and hand it over to Sara Lance.

Unfortunately, he's pretty sure he's about to play his hand at John Bender. These idiots are his escape crew now, and he's going to need their cooperation if they're busting out of here today.

The burning question, of course, is how?

His original plan didn't account for surprise guests. The rifle spring was only a small part of it. He'd been counting on having access to certain things - the sleeping quarters, maybe a shovel from the labor yard, the cover of nightfall, and most importantly that third layer fence. 

But that's all out the window now.

He doesn't know how much time they have before the guards send in the execution squad, or maybe worse, before they notice Leonard actually gives a damn about these people and decide to get cruel.

Anxiety settles like the devil in his chest. 

They have to leave before yard recess ends. There simply is no other option.

But _how_?

Fiddling with the rifle spring, he spins towards the conglomerate of heroes behind them and braces himself for their worst. He's going grin and bear through their drivel for a few minutes, and something will come to him.

Something has to.

To nobody's surprise, Barry Allen seems to have dropped his jaw on the ground.

"You... You just _hugged_ Sara Lance," he blurts out immediately. Like the rest of the them don't own their own pair of eyes. Like this really matters at all right now.

Leonard hefts a sigh. They don't have time for this.

"And what's it to you, Flash?" he asks icily.

"You're Captain Cold!" Barry splutters. Then his voice drops into some sort of ludicrous imitation of Leonard's drawl. "You're a criminal and a liar and you hurt people and you rob them, blah, blah, blah."

There's a woman with short red-dyed hair standing beside Barry. She wears an awkward, uncomfortable expression that strikes Leonard as out of place, given the fact that he's never met her before.

Her eyes cut harshly towards him when Barry finishes his (terrible) impression. 

"He said that to you?" she asks, aghast.

"Right after Barry trusted me and I viciously betrayed him," Leonard clips, waving a mildly irritated hand in the air.

She blinks at him like he's just revealed he's some sort of alien. _Apparently_ , this woman has never met an honest man before.

Sara releases a breath, quiet enough that maybe only he can hear her. "Snart," she mutters with a shadow of exasperation. It'd be a much more successful chastisement if his name didn't sound so damn _soft_ coming off her mouth.

Leonard swallows hard, his fingers twitching anxiously against his rifle spring again. God, he wants her out of here. 

Of course, Barry seems to have caught her tone too.

He waves their tangent off completely and spins towards Sara, still heartily choking on Leonard's love life. "Sara, you never told us you were on _hugging_ terms with Snart," he says, eyes honest and earnest and wide in that purely Barry way.

Her shoulders tense minutely.

It's subtle, something the others probably don't even notice. But not Leonard. He has internal warning bells specifically tuned into the 'assassin' frequency. He can't help the way the slightest movement from Sara triggers the hairs on the back of his neck to stand up. 

Or how he suddenly wants to deck Barry.

The instinct is ludicrous. 

Jax, of course, has the nerve to find this funny.

"Oh, come on Barry. I think they're going to be doing a lot more than hugging, if you know what I mean," he jeers.

That seems to shock Sara out of it. Her shoulders loosen just enough to skewer him with a downright menacing look.

"Jax, I swear to god, keep talking and you'll wish we left you here," she warns through her teeth.

If possible, Jax's grin grows wider. "Subtle as a ton of bricks," he declares shamelessly.

Sara's fingers flex murderously in her cuffs. 

"Jefferson, perhaps some tact is in order," Stein reprimands gently, before things get out of hand. Though Leonard swears there's a hint of a smile pulling at the corner of the Professor's lips.

This whole exchange is not helping Leonard's anxiety. 

He doesn't want to see Jax's dimples or feel Stein's lauding gaze. Maybe in another time or place, it would be nice to know they cared so much. But not here. Here it's just another reminder of all he has to loose if the next thirty minutes don't go their way. 

He looks towards Sara again, at the way she's something decidedly short of okay, despite the brave face she's wearing. 

They're all going to be the death of him today. 

"Oh my god," Barry's voice intrudes yet again, and Leonard realizes that he's just been caught staring. "This is why you helped me save Iris. I pitched you true love and you totally just bought it!"

Sara's eyes slide back to him and Leonard resists the urge to scowl.

Maybe it's his turn to threaten the children.

"Oh Barry, don't make me regret helping you," Leonard plasters a sharp smile onto his face. "Let's all just agree I'm a multifaceted individual and move on."

He spares a quick glance at their other two silent observers.

Oliver Queen hasn't said a word, but he's exactly what Leonard expected him to be - suspicious, stoic, and vaguely threatening. He's been watching this whole scene with an air of distrust since it began, though he seems to be wholly more interested in Sara's general state of well-being (or lack thereof), than anything Leonard has to offer. That suits him just fine. He's heard quite a bit about Star City's Robin Hood, and for the sake of his already bruised face, Leonard thinks it's probably best they save that particular introduction for later.

And then, of course, there's Terrill.

Ung.

He's standing apart from the others, watching with an expression that's trying very hard to be happy but falling just short of the mark.

Leonard has gotten to know the man fairly well during his short tenure here, and this thing Terrill does - where he looks at Leonard and sees Leo - got old on day two. There's nothing that Leonard can do or say to make him stop though. He knows, he's tried. Nastily, at times.

At least, it won't be a problem for much longer. If he can just figure out what to do about that damn fence...

Then he looks back to Barry and it hits him.

"Canary," Leonard mutters urgently. "Eight o'clock. Cover me."

Without further adieu, he strolls ever so casually to go further harass the Flash. Sara follows his lead, orbiting around his back so that she's standing a little closer to Stein. Leonard guesses they have about three and a half minutes now before the guard standing at the fence with the flashlight realizes Sara's conveniently blocking his view of Leonard's hands.

Oliver's gaze homes in on Leonard like a barred weapon the second he steps into Barry's personal space, the hostility suddenly oozing out of him. But Sara catches his eye and shakes her head once, and Oliver doesn't stop Leonard when he reaches out and taps Barry twice on the chest plate.

"Barry," Leonard says, drawl overtly absent - the kid needs to understand how serious this is. "Tell me Cisco hasn't meddled with this too much since Shark Week."

Barry's eyebrows furrow. "He has a little. Why?"

Leonard flashes the rifle spring at him. "Because if we stick around here long enough, you're going to learn that dog collar you're wearing is _shockingly_ painful," he says, reaching forward to pop the crest off the Flash costume. "I need to overload its internal circuit and unlock it at the same time to break it off your neck, and you conveniently carry a defibrillator on you."

Barry frowns.

"Snart, not that I'm complaining, but how do you know that?"

Leonard clicks his tongue. 

"Come now, Flash. You ask me to help you with Iris, bring me into your place of work, then leave me alone with all your computers. What did you think was going to happen?"

He takes the rifle spring and pries at the crease of the crest. The top pops off with some effort, revealing a rats nest of wires and microchips and other electronics. Barry was right, Cisco had changed a few things since Leonard saw the blueprints, but the bones are the same. It's easy to pick out the small battery soldered to some wires near the center of the circle.

"You stole the plans to my suit," Barry realizes aloud. There isn't an ounce of real surprise in his voice.

By this point, Leonard is hardly paying attention to Barry's blabbering. He's on a clock. They all are. And he's never been so singularly focused on something before in his life.

"Is it stealing if you gave me free acc-" he starts to quip absently.

But a foreign hand on his bicep stops his heart mid beat.

For a split-second Leonard knows in his bones that it's over. That he's been caught and all he has left to look forward to in life is a few miserable hours of pain before a stranger in a mask shoots him in the head.

Except that's not what this is.

He moves his eyes with a dangerous, deliberate calm towards the hand on his arm, only to find that it's not a guard. It's Terrill, who has, apparently, lost his whole damn mind.

"What are you doing?" he hisses in Leonard's ear, and Leonard thinks wildly that he's shot men for less.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" 

Terrill's face twists in disbelief. "Are you kidding me?" he whispers harshly. "We have to wait for Leo."

"No, you have to wait for Leo," Leonard corrects, ice in his veins. "We're leaving now." 

"That's not the plan."

"Well throw away the fucking plan!" Leonard snarls. 

Terrill seems to draw a blank. His mouth falls open and he gapes like those words, in that order, out of Leonard's mouth, don't make an ounce of sense to him.

"Terrill, if you don't take your hand off me _right now_ , she -" Leonard wags his head towards Sara "- is going to remove it for you."

Ray blinks down at his hand like he hadn't realized where he'd put it, then glances over at Sara. She doesn't make a specific effort to look threatening, but she doesn't have to. Her eyes drag quietly over Leonard to the spot where Terrill is touching him, and something disturbingly vulnerable and maybe a little resigned flashes across her face.

Terrill's hand drops off his arm like Leonard burned him.

Smart man.

Leonard returns to his work immediately, starting to dig through the wires to remove the battery, but that doesn't stop him from multi-tasking. Terrill has set him off. Poked at the worst of his anxiety so that it morphed into something ugly. 

He has to understand. _Anybody_ standing between himself, Sara, and the exit door today is his enemy. 

"Alright _Ray_ , I realize you're new to this kind of thing, so maybe I need to spell this out for you," Leonard starts, letting all the worst parts of Cold roil to the surface. "Since the minute I landed in this place, you have been dead set on rescuing me. Which suited me just fine when you brought superpowers and a get away car to the table. But guess what? My team is here now. I've got two meta-humans, an assassin, Robin Hood, and whatever the hell she is-" he gestures towards the red head -"I don't think I need you anymore."

Ray's lips curl over his teeth. "So that's it. You're just going to leave me here," he waves a hand in the air in disgust. "Where...Where is the _honor_ in that?"

Leonard snorts something bitter.

"I never pretended to be anything other than what I am. Not once," he sneers. "Not my fault you didn't believe me." He tugs violently at one of the wires in the Flash crest, and it starts to come loose. "But tell you what. I'm feeling generous. If you want to come, that's fine, but you've been demoted to a ride-along. We play by my rules now and I will _not_ wait here one minute longer than necessary for those guards to finish deliberating how they're going to kill _my_ people," Leonard growls.

He pulls at the battery free with one last successful yank, and turns to look Terrill dead in the eye.

"And let me make myself crystal clear. Get in my way, and I will destroy everything you have ever cared about."

"Snart!" Barry finally intervenes, a disapproving frown stretched across his face.

But Leonard wheels on him too. His ire burning everything now, without discrimination.

"What Barry?" he snaps. "Am I being too harsh for your fragile glass hero heart?"

"No, you just can't go threatening people because-"

"Where is Iris, Barry?" Leonard nearly roars. "She's clearly not here with you. If you came from your wedding, then where is your god damn wife?"

Barry freezes, not needing to respond. The answer is written oh-so-clearly all over his face. It's in the shadows under his eyes and the redness of his cheeks, and Leonard feels cold victory in his hands. 

"Alright that's enough," Oliver Queen says suddenly. He puts a hand on Barry's shoulder and steps between him and Leonard. 

But quite frankly, Leonard is well past the point of caring.

He looks at Barry over Queen's shoulder and holds up his lock pick.

"I am giving you a one way ticket to go find her. Right now. But if you want, sure we can wait for Terrill's phantom boyfriend, and maybe he comes with his army and rescues all us damsals, or maybe he doesn't. I give it somewhere between three hours and three days before they decide to kill you. How many days does Iris have, you think? What's their incentive to keep _her_ alive? Hm?"

Leonard finds himself inching closer, so that he's pressing threateningly into Oliver Queen's space, not that the Green Arrow is intimidated in the slightest. Behind him, the color has drained out of Barry's face, and Leonard thinks that maybe, just one more push is all he needs to get things moving again... 

Two hands circle Leonard's arm and literally pull his attention away from Barry and Oliver. He can't help but tense under them at first, but the grip is soft and familiar and so much different than Terrill's desperate digging fingers.

"Leonard, I think Barry gets the point," Sara says quietly. She slips in front of him, blocking Oliver, and her hands move from his arm to a spot on his chest. 

He looks down at her warily, taking in the aching concern that's sunk into her features. Carefully, Leonard covers her fingers gently with his own. He doesn't have to tell her how reckless he's feeling. She clearly already knows. 

"We leave now," he says firmly, feeling suddenly untethered.

He hasn't the faintest idea what he's going to do if she contradicts him. Probably something stupid and drastic, if their history is anything to go by.

But perhaps he shouldn't be so worried. Sara wears a soldier's calm as she stares, unblinking, into his face and nods. "Okay," she agrees, like it's really that simple. "We're with you, Leonard. All of us. You don't need to be that guy right now. Alright?"

He swallows thickly, entirely unsure whether he's physically capable of responding to that. She doesn't make him though. After holding his gaze for a few seconds, she gives his hands a firm squeeze and turns back to Barry. 

"Iris is fine," she asserts with fervor. "She's with Cisco and Caitlin and Mick, and we all know that he will literally burn down STAR labs before he lets anything happen to them. Yeah?" Barry gives her a small appreciative smile, still thoroughly deflated, but maybe less so than before. "Now," Sara continues. "We're getting out of here because we need to save Kara and murder the shit out of some bad guys. Any questions?"

She surveys everyone sharply, looking at every face, but especially Terrill's.

He shakes his head at her grimly. "You're making a mistake," he says. "I'm not pressing to wait because of who Leo is to me. Traveling outside of this camp without the rebellion's underground is suicide." 

Sara doesn't bat an eye. "Well it sounds like staying here is suicide. We don't have a choice." 

"And you trust him?" Oliver asks, glaring at Leonard. 

"With my life," Sara nods with total certainty. 

"If anybody's getting us outta here, it's Snart," Jax - who Leonard realizes is now covering his eight, since Sara moved - agrees.

"Indeed," Stein chimes in. "Perhaps just don't give him your wallet."

Leonard's chest suddenly feels so full that it hurts. He thinks it's high time they moved on from this.

"Are we satisfied?" he asks Oliver. 

Queen doesn't really look convinced, but he moves out of the way anyway. Sara follows Leonard back over to Barry. Not allowing as much distance between them as she had a moment ago. 

"Put this back on," Leonard instructs Barry, handing him the now mangled Flash crest. Then he pulls out the lock pick, the battery and two wires he'd pulled from Cisco's Flash tech and starts to fiddle with Barry's collar. 

It's silent for a beat, before Leonard decides to break it again.

"Who's Kara?" he asks quietly.

"It's a long story," Sara replies, almost ruefully. "But she's Alex's sister,-" she gestures towards the red-head, "-and they're part of the family now."

Leonard glances at the woman, Alex. She looks a little struck. 

"Is that what we're calling it now? _Family_?" he says the word distastefully, but it comes out with less bite than intended.

Sara shrugs. "It's catchier than saying Leonard's people every time," she says with small, teasing smile. Because _of course_ she caught that. "Mick calls Kara Skirt," she adds as an afterthought.

Leonard makes an exasperated noise. He kind of hates (in a good-natured, self-loathing sort of way) how Mick's nickname is an explanation in itself.

There's a faint clicking noise, followed by a sharp zap, and Barry's collar drops a few inches down his neck. Looking pleased, Barry glances down at his hands as they start to vibrate. 

"Stop that," Leonard hisses, glancing panicked over his shoulder. Thankfully, the guards don't seem to have noticed. "Look at me Barry. If you so much as breathe before I tell you to, they're going to shoot us. Do you understand?" 

Barry blinks. "Alright Snart," he nods. 

Leonard exhales. 

"Firestorm next." 

* * *

Leonard is freaking out.

Sara would've realized it earlier if she hadn't been so overwhelmed by the fact he was still breathing.

Hell, he'd almost assaulted Jax when he'd woken up. How could she not have seen it?

At least she can stop questioning if he's real. Only her Leonard could launch into a full-on asshole rant - targeting Barry 'I-don't-even-kill-spiders' Allen, no less - while trying to convince people to run away with him.

It'd be funny if it didn't also scare the living shit out of her. 

Leonard Snart is a lot of things, but he's no coward. She's watched him look people like Vandal Savage and Ra's al Ghul in the eye without blinking. God knows what he must've been through to scare this badly. 

She feels sick to her stomach just thinking about it. 

Leonard moves to do her cuffs and collar last. 

"What was your plan before you had Barry's Flash tech?" she asks him curiously, looking for any distraction he can give her. 

"The third-layer fence is electrified. It was about to get well acquainted with Terrill's neck."

Sara snorts, opening her mouth to say something snarky in response, when suddenly an alarm starts to blare through the yard. Leonard freezes, and lets out a string of curse words that would've impressed some of the worst in the League. 

"What's going on?" Alex asks. 

Guards carrying machine guns start to march through the gate and line the fences, while most of the other prisoners whimper and back away. They are the only ones who don't move. 

Ray answers her, "It's round up time." His tone is bitter.

"Round up for what?" Sara looks at Leonard.

There's a click as he manages to de-power her collar; although, her cuffs are still unfortunately still bolted to her wrists. Then suddenly Leonard is in her space, one hand pressing to the small of her back to urge her towards the fence with the herd of other scared people. She doesn't move yet.

"Sara please follow me. _Please_ ," he whispers in her ear, not even trying to hide his fear behind his cold mask. "It's... it's not actually him, okay?"

She looks at him, alarmed. Sara has no clue what he's talking about, but his eyes are wild and she feels like the look on his face is going to crack her in half.

"Leonard, what's going on?" she asks again, still not moving. 

"Sara," he's almost begging her now, and she is about to listen just to calm him down, when a familiar but cold voice sounds from the gate. 

"So these are the heroes."

A finger of dread touches the back of her neck, and she hears Leonard start cursing again.

The speaker is her father.

He strolls in, eyes glossing over the crowd, before settling on to her. A look of utter disgust crosses his face, and he scoffs. 

"Blonde hair, blue eyes. This is nordic perfection," he says. "Why would you align yourself with the unpure?"

Sara's heart hammers in her ears. Leonard's hold on her arm turns into a near-death grip. 

"Lots of reasons," she says. "But for one, I like men and I like woman. So maybe I am the unpure."

Her not-father takes a step closer. So that he's now within arms reach. She's never seen him look so repulsed.

"You know, I had a daughter that looked just like you, with similar compulsions," he says, lifting his hand up.

Sara can't even really react. Because despite the vile words coming out of this man's mouth, he's... he's _Quinton_. Her father. He didn't care when she came home a killer and told him about Nyssa. He is supposed to be safe. 

His fingers are an inch away from her cheek when suddenly a hand comes out and catches him by the wrist. 

"Sorry bub," Leonard's unmistakable drawl fills the air. "Can't let you do that." 

Quinton's face contorts. "Vermin," he says, yanking his arm away from Leonard and cracking the back of his other hand across Snart's face. "You are filth beneath my boot." 

Leonard releases a pained grunt and staggers off the left, and Sara can see with sudden clarity exactly what is about to happen.

She doesn't give herself any time to think.

Only reacts.

Quinton reaches for a gun on his belt, too focused on Leonard to see her loop towards him. She hooks her still-cuffed hands around his free arm, slipping them up until they catch on his shoulder. Her foot digs into his knee, forcing him down. She pulls. 

_Crack_.

Quinton's scream is drowned out by a sudden barrage of gunshots.

And all hell breaks loose. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every time I post a chapter for this story, my projected chapter count gets longer (sorrynotsorry). 
> 
> My bad for taking so long to update. School has actually been heinous this semester. The good news is that we're almost at winter break. So hopefully I'll be able to finish this story up after finals happen! Hope you all like this chapter.

Sara is not standing in the yard anymore.

She was just a second ago, but then she blinked. Now she's on the other side of the first layer fence, crouching behind the dirty Humvee that Evil Quinton arrived in.

The sudden commotion in the air is oppressive and instinct kicks in automatically. Sara throws her shoulder into the side of the car. Tries to make herself as small a target as possible for any bullets that might be flying this way. Her eyes skim over the dirt path behind her to check for enemies.

It's clear, for now.

The next tangible, coherent thought that enters into her mind is that Leonard is not here.

He had been right next to her when she had dislocated Evil Quinton's arm. A prime target for whichever guard had pulled the first trigger.

And now, he's not here.

For one awful moment, Sara feels like she's suffocating.

 _Whoosh_.

Leonard materializes out of thin air, looking almost as startled as Sara feels. He doubles over almost immediately. One hand slaps onto the side of the car for support and his whole chest heaves. A sticky wad of blood drips from the tip of his nose onto the ground.

Sara is so relieved, she could kiss him. Although, of course she doesn't _actually_ do that.

"Len?" she hisses, grabbing his free arm to hold him upright. "Are you alright?"

Leonard's eyes snap up to her like he hadn't realized she was there. The line of panic that set in his brow when the alarm started going off earlier fades.

"M'fine," he grunts, then makes a concerted effort to collect himself. He smooths his breathing and wipes the back of his wrist over a new gash on his cheek. Blood smears across his sleeve and Leonard scowls at the stain.

"Don't lie," Sara narrows her eyes at him. "Can you stand up straight?"

He waves a dismissive hand at her and uncurls himself.

"I'm fine," he repeats, a bit more coherently. Then huffs. "You'd think somebody've given Barry Allen the talk by now. You know, consent is sexy and all that. Getting flashed without permission? Incredibly violating."

Sara forces herself to take a deep breath.

"I'm sure your pride will recover," she says.

A small smirk starts to pull at Leonard's lips, while raw relief wears in his eyes.

The moment doesn't last.

Two guards round the rear of the car, practically tripping over Sara in their rush towards the yard. She's on them before they realize there's a threat. She slips her still-cuffed hands around one guy's neck and uses him as a human shield when the other reaches for his gun.

The rest is quick and messy and ends with two bodies lying motionless on the ground.

Sara ducks back against the car. She's barely broken a sweat, but she's aggravated now. Stressed. It's only a matter of time before more goons turn that corner to try to kill them, and she doesn't care how fine Leonard thinks he is.

He's in no condition to move anywhere fast.

"Sara," Leonard's drawl lilts around her name with a distinct note of disapproval, interrupting her train of thought. His eyes sharpen on her like he knows exactly what she's thinking.

Which, honestly, he probably does.

Sara had almost forgotten what this felt like. To exist next to someone who could practically read her mind, even when she's gone near-full assassin mode.

 _Whoosh_. _Whoosh._

Alex and Oliver slam suddenly into the rear car door, and the interruption snaps Leonard's laser focus away from Sara. Their friends both have assault rifles clutched in their hands.

"You guys alright?" Barry appears on Sara's left. His hair is a tussled wind-blown mess and his eyes quickly skim over the two bodies on the ground. Though he doesn't pass comment.

"We're not dead," Sara offers.

Oliver's face is twisted in a vexed grimace. "Ung Barry, we had that handled," he says as he steadies himself. Apparently also disoriented from transport-by-Flash.

Almost like Oliver had summoned it, a violent flash of light erupts from behind the car, followed quickly by a loud bang. Sara chances a look through the Humvee window. On the other side, the yard is ablaze. Jax and Stein have merged into Firestorm and seem to be standing in the middle of it, and to Sara's surprise, so is Ray Terrill. He's floating twenty feet off the ground. Lit up like the god damn sun.

"Not quite like they've got it handled," Leonard offers dryly, just to be unhelpful.

Oliver is clearly unamused by the comment.

"Guys, we need to move," Alex says urgently. "We're sitting ducks here."

Right, Sara couldn't agree more.

"Barry, can you flash us through the fence?" she asks.

"Yeah su-"

"Bad idea. I told you, the fence is electrified," Leonard interrupts. "We try to go through it and we end up deep fried."

Oliver purses his lips. "Fine," he allows. "Then what's your plan."

"Well if sparky one or sparky two decide to take a break from the fire fight in there, they could blast us out. Otherwise..." Leonard hesitates, thinking for a moment. "Barry breaks into every guard tower, pulls all the gate open switches. We walk out the front door."

Alex shifts uneasily. "They're not going to let us get close to that gate," she says.

"Well you're welcome to stay here," Leonard quips.

Oliver sighs and turns to Barry. "The minute you're done with the guards, you come back and help us clear a path," he orders.

Barry nods. "Back in a Flash," he promises. Then vanishes.

Oliver kneels down, grabs another gun off one of the bodies Sara dropped and wordlessly holds it towards Leonard.

Snart takes it with a nod.

"You ever use one of those before?" Alex checks, sounding very much like a government agent under the impression she's speaking to a civilian.

Leonard rewards her a megawatt deadpan.

"Once or twice," he assures her with a criminal glint in his eye.

Alex frowns, her eyes flitting towards Sara with uncertainty, and all Sara can offer is a stiff apologetic smile and an affirmative nod. It's hard to imagine she'd been worried about making things weird with Alex this morning, _before_ they'd found Leonard.

Because this dynamic here, is just straight up awkward.

For better or worse though, the time for arguments, discussion, and banter has run out. They can hear shouting from the other side of the car. It's now or never.

Oliver slides towards the rear bumper and raises two fingers.

Sara settles herself.

"Snart," she says quickly, before the mayhem begins. "If I turn around and see you're lagging, I am going to literally throw you over my shoulder and carry you out of here. Got it?"

Leonard blinks.

Oliver's hand closes into a fist.

Sara just barely hears Leonard say, "You carry me anywhere you like, assassin." Then they rush the corner and jump into the fire pit.

* * *

Sara doesn't like to admit when she needs help, but today is already turning out to be unusual for a number of more pressing reasons.

The fight is not going well.

Oliver, Alex, and Leonard, are all very good shots, and the battle to the other side of the second layer fence is deceptively easy. Sara nabs a bullet-proof riot shield off the ground and forces men into close combat who definitely don't want to be there. They're not bad, but they're not immortal, trained by Ra's al Ghul, or wielding literal magic. Which is Sara's bar for difficult these days.

She pulls a switchblade from one of their belts and hand cuffs be damned. Suddenly she's unstoppable.

Then Leonard's magazine clip runs out.

Sara's not exactly sure how she hears him curse from ten yards away, but she does. And the adrenaline that's pumping through her system suddenly is no longer the good kind.

It's like they know.

The soldier she's fighting dives away from her, gun pointed towards Leonard and she has to tumble after him to keep his shots from landing. Alex gets the man in the knee before she's forced into a full on grappling match, but the next one is on her before she knows it.

The guards are swarming them. Overwhelming by sheer numbers. And Sara is too distracted keeping half tabs on Leonard - who has found a new gun but is moving too slow - to put her full back into this fight.

She takes a hard hit in the shoulder. Then is grazed in the side with a knife. Dirt is smeared across her face and Sara can feel it. They're loosing ground.

Suddenly, a flash of blue light rains down from the sky and the guard tower closest to them shatters.

Sara gapes at the destruction, and decides maybe she doesn't need to run point any longer.

Pulling back, the team covers her while she slides down next to Leonard. That flash of light was familiar. Too familiar. If she wasn't already crouching in the dirt next to him already, she might have thought...

"What the hell was that?" Oliver growls while he reloads.

Leonard's mouth drops open.

"I _might_ owe Terrill an apology," he mutters. Another shot fires from the perimeter and blows a hole clean through the third layer fence. "I think that's Leo."

In the distance, a military passenger-transport style pick-up speeds out of the tree line towards the prison camp. A man is hanging out of the passenger door, holding some sort of glowing blue gun in his hand. Sara can just make out the silhouette of a fuzzy parka hood through the haze of the ground's lights.

"He's your doppelgänger?" she realizes aloud.

Leonard makes an unhappy noise. "So I've been told," he confirms.

Ray and Firestorm drop down from the sky to join the group - Ray quite literally beaming.

Barry reappears a few seconds later as well. 

The car drives right through the hole that Leo blasted in the fence and skids to a stop a few feet in front of them.

"Looks like you all are in a bit of hot water," Leo announces with a wild grin, hopping out of the passenger's seat. "Thought I'd come cool things down."

Ray lets out an airy laugh.

"About time," he takes two long strides forward and plants a brazen kiss on Leo's lips. Leo seems surprised by the public affection but accepts happily enough. "We were about to leave without you," Ray tells him when they part.

"Yes, we noticed," Leo says with more genuine cheer than Sara's ever seen on Leonard. "The Sturmbannführer was supposed to take you out of the fence line in," he glances at his wrist watch. "Seven minutes. Not a big fan of going off script like this, but I think I adapted the pun pretty well." Leo's expression melts into something disturbingly soppy. "I wasn't leaving today without you."

"Oh, I hate him already," Leonard mutters under his breath. And yeah, Sara does feel like she's woken up on the weird side of a Freaky Friday spinoff.

"Hey. We gettin out of here or not?" Jax interrupts them.

"Yeah, we are," the driver yells from inside the car. "Leo, take them to the back. Now."

Leo smirks. The expression is so similar to Leonard's signature, but somehow also lighter.

"You heard the man," he shouts. "Let's move."

* * *

Oliver gives them cover fire while they pile into the car. There's not enough seats for the whole party to fit comfortably. The rebels had been expecting two prisoners, not eight, but they manage.

Leonard and Ray get shouldered in first, at a combination of Sara, Barry, and Leo's insistence. It's the most defensible part of the car, and Sara will not accept anything less after what they've been through in the camp.

Leo ends up in the back next, sliding onto the floor by Ray's feet and resting one arm in his lap.

And Sara. Well, Sara means to pick the seat next to Leonard. Until Jax, freshly split from Stein for fire safety purposes, squeezes in next to her and gives the two of them a look.

"Come on Sara," he shouts over the noise of Oliver's gunfire. "There's not enough room, and _I_ am not sitting on Snart."

Sara rolls her eyes. "Twerp," she mutters and cuffs him upside the head.

But she listens anyway.

Leonard doesn't say a word as she slips into his lap, though he does shift to accommodate her. One of his hands trails along her back towards her hip and the other lands on her knee, and when Sara turns to look at him, she feels a little struck.

Because Leonard is smiling. Like really smiling. Sara thinks she can count on one hand how many times she's seen even a shadow of this on his face.

"Always knew you'd jump me one day Canary," he says, looking mighty pleased with himself.

Sara's heart beats once. Then twice.

And she realizes that no, the mission's not over, but it's kind of on pause. Isn't it? They've made it to the get-away car. They're _safe_ for the immediate future.

The feelings she'd barely swallowed earlier bubble to the surface before the thought is even complete.

Everything hits her like a freight train all at once, and it's jarring.

It hits her that Leonard is alive. That he's spent the last two months in a prison camp. That she almost lost him a second (third?) time over five minutes ago because he wanted to play hero again. And that he's here. Right now. Smirking like he's proud of himself.

She finds that she's inexplicably furious with him.

"What the hell Snart," she breathes, closing her eyes and knocking her head against the back wall of the pick up.

There's a long pause where all she hears is the sound of the car wheels squealing in the mud and gunfire fading in the distance. She tries to focus on that, because if she doesn't, then she's going to think about how Leonard's hand has started to rub slowly up and down the outside of her thigh, and _that_ is not helping to steady her heart rate.

Eventually, she peaks back at Leonard to find him watching her speculatively.

"You're mad at me," he notes, not quite bothered. And, oh, she knows from the look on his face that he's reading quite a bit into the fact that she hasn't told him to remove his hands yet.

"Do you have any idea how close you just were to getting shot?" she asks.

Leonard, the asshole, seems to be faintly amused. Sara wants to smack him upside the head like she'd done to Jax, except the thought of jostling a bruise and seeing him wince makes her feel sick.

"Pretty close I take it," Leonard comments lightly.

Sara glares at him, one cuffed hand reaching out to grab a handful of his shirt. "Snart, I swear to god-"

"Lance, believe it or not," he cuts her off with a pointed dry look. "I have a bit of a complex when it comes to evil fathers and personal space."

Sara's rage stutters to a screeching halt her chest. She doesn't know what to say to that. It hadn't even crossed her mind...

Leonard gives her knee a firm squeeze and adds, " _Loved_ the way you pulled a man's arm out of its socket for me though. We should do that part again sometime."

And Sara kind of wants to strangle him again.

With a huff she twists her hands in her cuffs. The metal broke skin at some point during the fighting, and now that the adrenaline is starting to wear off, her wrists sting. If anything, that only makes her want to pull against them more. It hardly seems fair that Leonard can sit there with his hands all over her while she's all chained up and ready to explode.

"Hold them up for me," Leonard says suddenly, something in his tone softening.

At first she's doesn't realize what he's talking about. Then he shifts to sit up a bit more and starts to pull her even closer to him. Leonard is so lanky that he's able to wrap his one arm all the way around her back and hold her forearms steady while he reproduces his handy-dandy rifle spring in his other. He rests his chin on her shoulder so that he can see what he's doing.

"You know most guys flirt with a game of pool or something. Not let-me-undo-your-handcuffs," Sara grumbles.

Leonard turns his head a little so that she can feel his breath tickling the crook of her neck. "I'm one of a kind," he mutters in her ear, voice low and just a little rough. "But if you're complaining, just say the word and I'll back off."

It's too many feelings to process at once. Her anger flares, and a shiver runs down her spine, and something painful twists in her chest, and Sara doesn't have a response that's a sufficient combination of furious, flirty, and raw to encompass everything at once.

So instead, she grits out a menacing, "Shut up Snart," and leans stubbornly into his chest.

Sara swears she can practically hear him smirking through the silence that follows.

Eventually, the handcuffs make a clicking noise and drop into her lap.

Sara bends a wrist to start flexing the soreness out of it, but then Leonard is there again. He abandons the lock pick with the cuffs and takes one of her hands in his, rubbing little circles around her wrist joint and expertly teasing the pain out of her muscles.

"You're shaking," Leonard notes. His breath still distractingly close to her ear.

Sara's uniquely overwhelmed. Dealing with feelings she boxed and hasn't looked at since the day the Oculus blew up. 

"Well, you know I'm having kind of a rough day," she manages to rasp back. Leonard hums, and Sara realizes with sudden clarity that it's only been two months for him. That he doesn't know. "Rough year and a half," she corrects herself, forcing out some honesty.

"What?" His fingers stop their ministrations for a fraction of a second.

"It's been a year and a half for us Len," Sara repeats herself. "I just... this is a lot to process."

Another beat of silence.

Then- "And on a scale of one to 'I was so lonely without you that I returned to my murder cult,' how would you say you're doing," he asks delicately.

And just like that the tension breaks.

Sara lets out a breath that's almost a laugh and a smile creeps unexpectedly onto her face. Twisting a little so that she can see him, Sara reaches up and wipes some of the grime off of Leonard's cheek with her thumb.

He's right after all. They've done this once before. 

"Lonely enough that I accepted a leadership position. How's that?" she offers quietly.

Leonard's eyes follow her movements like he's only half paying attention to their conversation.

"With the team?" he asks.

"Guess you're not the only Captain on the reject squad anymore," Sara nods.

"What happened to Rip?" Leonard mutters and leans just a little closer.

"He gave himself a promotion. Help me bury the body later?"

Leonard doesn't answer the question.

The next thing Sara knows, he's kissing her.

In a way, it's just like their first kiss. Desperate. Like they might not get to do this ever again. But it's also nothing like that. It lasts more than two seconds and Leonard's arms are not tied up with a bomb. He was already wrapped half around her before they started. And the second his lips touch hers, she's pulling him closer.

God, she's never even let herself dream of this.

It's too easy to forget that they're in a truck packed with a good portion of their friends.

Jax is too happy to remind them.

"Gross guys. Get a room," he complains loudly, bringing Sara back to reality. She breaks away from Leonard, feeling her face turn a faint red.

At some point Jax slipped onto the ground by Leonard's feet and Stein took the bench on Leonard's other side. The two of them are wearing twin grins. Sara wonders if they even realize that between the three of them, the Legends present have flanked Leonard from every single open angle.

"What can I say, the lady can't keep her hands off me," Leonard drawls, clearly not embarrassed in the slightest.

Sara glares at him. This is totally his fault.

"Please," she scoffs. "Leonard, you'll know when I'm jumping you."

"Oh really?" he grins at her.

"Really," Sara smirks.

She's sorely tempted to lean in and kiss him again. To prove a point, and also just because she can.

Then she accidentally catches Alex's eye across the crowded car bed.

She's sitting next to Barry, looking supremely uncomfortable. A small guilty knot drops into Sara's stomach, and she's reminded that some of the others are still in the middle of what could end up being the worst day of their lives.

Leonard can wait.

"You know I don't think I've ever seen him smile before," Ray comments, eyes crinkling around the edges.

Of course, that makes Leonard scowl almost immediately. "Don't get used to it. Your face is a pretty good mood-killer," he says, slouching into Sara like she might be able to hide him from them.

Leo, who up until this point has been fairly silent, moves to rest the side of his head on Ray's knee. "I like your face," he says quietly. Ray softens almost immediately.

"You know, Terrill mentioned you were a sap," Leonard's eyes narrow. "I almost didn't believe him."

Leo gives Leonard an interested once-over. "Well, I haven't heard anything about you. Our inside man only slipped out that it would be a bigger prison break than originally planned," he says lightly, cocking his head to the side. "Are you always this," he waves his hand up and down. "Prickly?"

Sara snorts. "Oh, he's in a good mood right now," she answers for him.

Leo's eyebrows go up in surprise, and he glances over to Ray for confirmation.

"What's it look like when he's in a bad mood?"

"I start pulling guns on people," Leonard supplies easily.

And oh, that hits a little too close to home. Sara feels herself physically wince at the memory.

Jax is suddenly choking on air.

"Mr. Snart," Stein's lips twists into a disapproving frown. "Please don't say..."

"Oh he did," Sara mutters. "When you all were captured by the Time Masters."

The arm Leonard has wrapped around her waist tightens minutely. "I apologized," he says, eyes sweeping over her.

"Do I get an apology for all the times you pulled a gun on me?" Barry asks from across the car.

"Definitely not."

Sara sighs. "You're lucky I missed you crook," she says and dips her head to rest on his shoulder.

Leonard is immediately placated. "Missed you too, assassin," he whispers back, too low for the others to hear.

Their friends continue to haze Leonard as the car takes them further and further away from the camp. And Sara lets them. It's oddly comforting to hear his sarcastic retorts.

The mission isn't over yet. Sara knows that. But against her better judgment, she thinks that the stars might have aligned for her this time. Maybe, when today is over, she's actually going to get to keep him. 


	5. Chapter 5

The drive to the rebel hide-out takes four hours.

Barry offers to run the caravan to its destination no less than seven times in that period, but Leo won't hear it. The location is classified, he says. Just because they're on the same side, doesn't mean they get free access to information. Security protocols must be upheld.

Honestly, that's fine with Leonard. This car ride could last five minutes or five years, and the others won't hear a peep of complaint out of him.

After all, Sara Lance is sitting in his lap.

She has slowly _snuggled_ further into his side over the course of the last few hours, abducting his right hand in hers, resting her temple on his shoulder, and Leonard's head is just gone. He thinks he'd literally be more in control of himself shit-faced drunk.

It's just... despite all the planning, the fighting and the hero shit that he's pulled. Some significant part of him didn't believe this was ever actually going to happen.

He'd been certain that he was going to die in that Prison Camp, or maybe he'd get out, only to learn he was trapped on Earth X. Hell, at one point he'd entertained some vile nightmare where he'd managed to get home only to learn that the Legend's newest big bad had annihilated the Wave Rider while he'd been indisposed.

But none of those things have happened. For once in his miserable life, Leonard appears to be getting exactly what he wants.

Color him shocked.

Eventually, the pick-up truck slows to a gradual halt, and the engine cuts off with a mechanical puff. Two thick slaps reverberate through the back wall, causing Leo to perk up in his seat.

"Ah, we're here," he announces to the group.

There's a cacophony of noise as people start to stir. Oliver Queen jumps out of the car before Leo finishes his sentence, Alex wakes up from a nap she took on Barry's shoulder, and Terrill tries his best to stretch out his limbs in the void of space Queen left behind.

When Sara stirs, Leonard feels a disgruntled noise rise involuntarily in his throat. Perhaps he spoke too soon earlier. Five minutes or five years, this car ride was always doomed to end with lots of complaining.

He drops her fingers so that he can get his arms around her properly again.

"What if we let the others go inside and we just stayed here?" he whispers in her ear.

Sara glances at him, a touch of amusement dancing in her eyes.

She seems to be doing much better than she was earlier. The Sara that found him bleeding in the mud was one wrong look away from murder. And, okay sure, the murder bits are never far from the surface when it comes to Sara, and a non-trivial amount of murder may have indeed occurred.

But still, she seems much more like herself again. Less... shaken.

"You can't possibly be comfortable right now," she says to him.

Leonard begrudgingly admits that's true. All the time spent seated upright on a bench with a person on top of him hasn't exactly mixed well with his injuries, but he's not in agony either. It's not nearly a good enough reason to make him give her up just yet.

"You're comfortable," he counters.

Sara hums once, the humor giving way to something impish.

"Oh, so it's all about me, huh?"

"What can I say," Leonard shrugs. "I'm a giver."

Sara twists a little in his arms, so that he suddenly finds himself looking directly into her eyes.

"Well, you know what I want Leonard?"

He watches her carefully. Positive, for a moment, that he's lost the ability to breathe.

"Do tell."

"I want you to go inside and get cleaned up, so I can stop wondering whose blood stains are on your shirt," she answers, trailing one hand over a particularly gruesome spot on his chest.

It's definitely his own blood, but she doesn't need that confirmed. Leonard releases a dramatized sigh.

"I _suppose_ a shower doesn't sound horrible," he admits.

Sara's lips twitch. Not quite smug, but definitely something close. "Good," she says. "Cause I'm not done."

"Oh?" Leonard raises an eyebrow.

Sara moves her hand up to his jaw so that her thumb is tracing the outline of a bruise.

"I want you to let their doctors check you out without being a difficult ass about it the whole time," Sara says.

That does earn a scowl from him.

"They're going to give me a pack of band-aids and tell me to rest. Doubt they'll be pleased with whatever asinine escape plan the Scooby Doo Crew is about to come up with," he argues.

"This would be you being difficult," Sara points out.

He huffs.

"Fine. I promise I'll listen to the good doctors."

"Gideon would be proud."

"I'm thrilled."

Sara gives him a small smile. "You're right though," she continues. Because of course there's more. "After you're done with all that, I do want to get back home and rescue our friends."

He groans.

She's only a few inches away from his face now. The one hand still on his chest and the other still on his cheek. She has to know exactly what this is doing to him.

"This is a rather lengthy list of demands," he complains. Pauses. Runs his knuckles down the forearm she has held up to his face. "Think you've covered everything?"

Sara takes a long, long moment to respond.

"When everyone's okay, I guess it _would_ be nice to go home and get reacquainted."

"Reacquainted, huh?" Leonard breathes. "Finally, something I want."

"I thought you were a giver?" she says.

"Only when it comes to you."

The words fall out of his mouth before he can think better of them, and the mood just shatters. Like he'd severed some cord that he hadn't even known was there. Leonard suddenly wishes that he had said something, anything else. The little smirk on Sara's face vanishes, giving way to something painful, and he hates it.

Then Sara glances over her shoulder towards the exit. Most of their friends have trickled out by now. They're not alone, but they have twice the privacy they did before.

She turns back to him and presses a searing kiss to his lips and Leonard doesn't have the willpower to question it. He is consumed by her.

It's too quick. He feels like he's barely collected one of the two functioning brain cells he still left, when Sara starts to pull away. He tries his best to chase her, but she stops him with a hand on his chest.

"I'm sorry. Leonard, I can't do this until I know you're safe. Really safe. I just can't," she says quietly, dropping her forehead to rest against his.

Leonard's chest aches. Lifting his hand off her waist, he catches her cheek and pulls back just far enough to place a gentle kiss on her forehead. Fuck the asshole that made her hurt like this. Fuck him.

"Consider me highly motivated," he mutters.

He would promise her that he's going home, even if it's the last thing he ever does. Except it won't be.

This time around, the pair of them are going to do this right.

* * *

The super-duper-classified-top-secret rebel base turns out to be located at the Arrowcave, which really undercuts all the time Leo spent upholding protocol during the car ride. Leonard is more than a little amused by the flicker of surprise on Ray's face when they walk in and Oliver blurts out, "I guess we're in Earth X's Star City," without much fanfare.

The conversation that follows is less fun.

Leo introduces them to Freedom Fighter General Schott - a bit of a mouthful, if you ask Leonard - who explains that the rebels are going to imminently bomb their only way home. The team is predictably upset.

Leonard leans against an industrial column at the edge of the group, just behind Sara, and mostly stays out of it. This is the team's first real experience with the rebels, so they haven't learned how to set their expectations yet.

Leonard, however, has spent two months listening to war stories from Ray.

They're good people, but they've been fighting so hard for so long that they've learned how to make sacrifices. Everything here is about the bottom line, and the bottom line has nothing to do with Leonard, Sara, Barry Allen, Oliver Queen or any of the rest of them.

That's fine.

Personally, Leonard has no qualms about taking what the rebels won't give. They're fools if they think his team isn't going through that portal. Hell, he hasn't even cased the place yet, and he already has line of sight on a rocket launcher, car keys, and a map.

Security protocols, his ass. 

"Leonard, we can lend you some clothes. If you're interested," Ray interrupts his thought.

Leonard's eyes slide cooly over to his fellow jailbird. "Sure," he nods innocuously as he kicks off from the column.

He drops his hand onto the small of Sara's back and makes a show of kissing her temple before truly moving to follow. Partially because he wants to. Partially because it's fun to goad Barry and Oliver. And partially because they have to communicate in this room full of people somehow.

"Behave Snart," Sara mutters, giving him a look. Something in her eyes is still subdued from their conversation in the car. "Focus on getting cleaned up please."

Translation: They're not so desperate as to start stealing rocket launchers just yet.

He smirks. "Yes Captain."

Message received. For now.

* * *

Sara watches as Leonard goes. Only mildly concerned that he's going to grab something important while he's galavanting around the base.

She's felt... cold, since they had untangled from each other, but she's trying very hard not to think about it. The situation with the rebels is more important. Not that there's much to _do_ about that now, much to Sara's chagrin.

Alex is their best shot at a friendly solution to this predicament, but the look on her face when Schott broke the news had been a little too familiar. Sara could probably see it right now in the bathroom mirror if she really wanted to. She's doing so much better now than she was this time year ago. After Laurel...

But she still remembers.

If Schott chooses not to help them, even when he can see that guttural fear in Alex's eyes, then he's a lost cause.

Sara shakes her head. Clearly, it's a terrible idea for her to stay idle while waiting on Leonard and Alex.

Most of the others have already dispersed, and Sara thinks maybe she'll do some snooping for files on the Reich. The rebels must keep their intel around here somewhere. Having some extra info on their enemy could be useful.

She strolls towards a bookshelf that's against the wall that houses the superhero suits back at home. There is a row of three ring binders on the top shelf that looks like a promising enough place to start. They're a little too high for her to reach without help, but before she can start plotting ways to scale the wall, she feels a familiar presence behind her.

"Hey," Oliver announces himself quietly. Then plucks the binder she'd been eyeing off the shelf.

Sara takes it from him. "Thanks," she says.

Oliver shrugs. "Anything worthwhile?" he asks.

Sara puts the binder flat on a nearby table and opens it. The very first page she opens to is labeled _Zor-El Prison Facilities_. There's a grainy photo beneath the title of four nondescript men in striped prisoner uniforms digging some kind of hole. Two guards are holding assault rifles behind them. One missing his helmet and smiling at the other.

Sara feels her mouth go dry as she realizes what she's looking at. What she could know if she decides to read this intel.

She closes the binder.

"Hey. Sara," Oliver says softly. "Are you okay?"

Sara closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. If she was talking to anybody else, she'd be lying through her teeth already. But this is Oliver. The two of them have been through so much together. There's not another person in the world that will get how much this matters.

"I'm alright for now" she sighs, pressing her thumb to the bridge of her nose. "But ask me that question again in twenty four hours. Oliver, if we loose him again-" she cuts herself off, unable to finish the sentence.

If she looses him again, it's not going to be pretty. For anyone.

Oliver hardly reacts.

For a moment, she thinks he might regale her with one those macho vows that he likes to make when he's backed into a corner. _We'll get him home safe. I promise._ But she's pleasantly surprised when he doesn't.

Oliver releases a deep world-weary sigh. "You never mentioned him before," he says.

Sara shrugs.

"Yeah well, he died about twelve hours before I found out about Laurel. I was a bit distracted."

Oliver sucks in a breath and he wipes a hand over his jaw.

"What about after?"

Sara just shakes her head. "There was an incident with Damien and Malcolm. They picked him up in 2015 before we met, and had him working against us. It's been a sore spot," she admits.

"I'm always here. You know that right? Whenever you need someone."

"I know," Sara smiles. She takes a step forward and places a quick kiss on his cheek. "I just wasn't ready yet. The closest I ever got to _grieving_ him was emptying a bottle of whiskey with Rory."

Oliver levels her with an unimpressed look, and for a second Sara catches a small glimpse of the charming douchebag that she grew up with. Something loosens a little in her chest.

"Sounds healthy," he comments.

She socks him lightly on the bicep. "Pot meet kettle," she replies.

Oliver rubs his arm. He doesn't seem sorry in the slightest. "Want to try a different binder?" he asks.

It's a change in subject, but also it's not. Sara glances back over at the bookshelf and nods. Something calm and lethal thrums in her veins.

"I want something on their generals," she says.

Oliver nods in agreement. "I meant it earlier. They die for this."

Because as far as unhealthy coping mechanisms go, violence is a language Oliver and Sara speak fluently.

* * *

Leonard takes four times longer than Ray in the shower. Which is really saying something, because the water is running in the next stall for quite a while. He could blame it on his injuries or say that he was giving Ray alone time with his boyfriend, but honestly, Leonard is just appreciating the hot water.

He was a shower hog _before_ he went two months without seeing a working faucet. Now that he's back in society, he is about to become a down right menace. Jax is probably going to murder him in a few weeks when they're sharing the _WaveRider's_ singular bathroom again. 

Eventually, Leonard finishes scrubbing all twenty layers of dirt off his skin, washing out his cuts and scrapes to the best of his ability, and decides that enough is probably enough. He doesn't want to take so long that he misses his opportunity to properly case the rebel hideout.

Leonard wraps a towel around his waist and steps out of the shower stall into the communal bathroom. Then makes his way through the far door to the bunk space. Luckily the rebels don't seem to be allowed a mid-day break hour. Or if they are, they're spending it elsewhere.

This wing of the base has been vacant since he'd arrived, and Leonard deeply appreciates the feeling of aloneness.

Unfortunately, it doesn't last.

He's got his pants on and the towel around his shoulders when he hears footsteps in the doorway. So at least he's covered. It doesn't stop the faint bite of annoyance at the intrusion. He knows who it is even before he looks.

"I suppose you rebels aren't big on privacy hm?" Leonard drawls.

"Oh, don't get all bashful on me," Leo replies. "Not like you've got something I haven't seen before."

Another larger, nearly irrational swell of irritation overtakes Leonard. All he's heard about since he landed on this damn planet is perfect Leo. His double in every way, except for those that matter. 

_Leo wouldn't have done that. Leo would've cared. Leo loves me. Leo's a good man. Not like you._

Maybe it's not fair. The two of them only just met a few hours ago, but Leonard has a visceral desire to push him. To see if he's really worth all the pain that he's caused Leonard on this planet. It doesn't help that Leonard hates the way Leo looks at him. Like he's a puzzle waiting to be solved. 

So he does something out of character.

Leonard lets the towel drop off his shoulders, giving Leo an eyeful of scars. Long scars. Short scars. Bullet scars, burn scars, and bottle scars. Some of them are fresh from the prison. Some of them are mementos of jobs gone bad, but most of them are from Lewis.

He turns to look at Leo.

"You sure?" Leonard asks, ever so casually. "Heard you were raised by Mom."

Leo, for a moment, doesn't say a word. His eyes slide over Leonard's chest in a startled, almost disoriented way. Like he's looking at his own head photoshopped onto another person's body. And perhaps that's exactly what this is. Leonard is suddenly viciously grateful that their roles aren't reversed. That he doesn't have to see what he'd look like if he were... whole.

"And you weren't?" Leo asks, with genuine surprise.

"I wasn't."

Feeling too exposed, Leonard pulls on the long sleeved shirt to cover himself, and doesn't offer any further explanation. Leo thankfully doesn't press the issue, though he clearly wants to.

"I'm sorry," he says a moment later.

"Is that why you dropped in? To say you're _sorry_?"

Leo frowns. "Well, if I'm being honest, no. I thought the two of us could talk."

Leonard crosses his arms and leans against a rusty locker.

"What could we possibly have to talk about?"

Leo seems a bit non-plussed.

"Well, it's not everyday you get to meet yourself from another planet. Maybe I want to hear about what life's like on the other side. A Leo Snart -"

"Leonard. _Never_ Leo."

"- a _Leonard_ Snart that hasn't spent his whole life fighting and being hunted by Nazi's."

Leonard considers his double. The drawling speech pattern. The slight cock of his head. The obnoxious smirk he's wearing. And he can just tell.

"Bull shit. You're here to ask me about Terrill."

Leo's smirk breaks, and for the shadow of a second, a real smile seems to light up his face.

"What gave me away?"

Leonard scoffs. "All he's talked about since I met him is you. Call it a wild guess. So why don't we skip the games, and you just cut to the chase."

Leo moves a little further into the room. He steps around Leonard and takes a seat on one of the bed. Every movement carefully telegraphed.

"He implied some things. About you," he explains hesitantly. "I wanted to hear it from the source."

Ah.

Leonard hadn't known this was coming, but it's not exactly surprising either. He knows Terrill and Leo finally got a moment alone while he was showering, and he knows, both second hand and from experience, that the two of them talk incessantly about their feelings.

He tips his head slightly in acknowledgement. Maybe he does owe Leo this much.

"They thought I was you, you know. That's how I got pinched," Leonard replies, after a long moment. "I woke up in some alley after the... ah, incident that brought me here, and made a wrong turn down the wrong street and got recognized. They sent me to that particular tin can because they thought they could pit me and your boyfriend against each other." He shrugs. "I set them straight."

Leo leans forward, setting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together. "By telling them you didn't care," he clarifies evenly.

Interestingly enough, even though he's looking at his own face, Leonard can't tell if Leo is upset or not.

"Yep," Leonard agrees. "And why not? It was the truth. Would you have preferred I pretended to be you?" He tilts his head to the side, almost amused. "You should be thanking me really. If I hadn't been so convincing, it would've been worse. You would've gotten him back missing bits. Now, I imagine he'll just be a bit clingy for a while."

Leo's eyes flash back down to Leonard's covered chest. Looking at phantom wounds.

"I know what they do in those camps," he says darkly. "I can respect that you did what you thought was necessary. Especially since I can't imagine Ray was nearly as... persuasive... when the tables were turned."

"But?" Leonard raises an eyebrow.

Some of the warmth vanishes from Leo's eyes, and he straightens, rising back to his feet and taking a pose that's entirely too military to be friendly.

"But you're back in the real world now. You don't hurt him anymore," he says, tone cold.

Leonard smirks. The attempt at least is cute.

"Well I hope the Nazi's find you more intimidating," he says. "But threat received, I suppose. If it makes you feel better, I don't hurt people when there's no gain in it for me."

"That doesn't make me feel better at all," Leo backs down a little. 

"Sounds like a personal problem." Leonard kicks off the locker and gives Leo one last side-long glance. "Now, if you'll excuse me," he drawls. "Let's never do this again." Then Leonard moves to saunter back out towards the main room. 

Sara had given him her wishlist after all, and he still has a doctor to see.


End file.
